Bowzer

Emotions in humans are much more complex and thus, allow for a much richer experience. Our emotions have conceptual roots. Most importantly, I think, is the fact that our emotions are self-made. When you hear a piece of music that invokes your deepest emotions, you connect to that music personally because you have created that same atmosphere in your own emotional context. Compare the fright that a cat might experience upon hearing the shriek of a Schoenberg piece to the contempt that I experience--a philosophically/esthetically rooted contempt that summarizes my disdain for all man-hating intellectuals. Quite a difference there but fundamentally the cat and I agree.

This is a problem that everyone faces to some degree--not just Objectivists. I would highly recommend that you research the schools in your area. This might make all the difference to your educational career. Read the course descriptions from the institution's catalog: do they stress racism and postmodernism over reason and truth? Is there any kind of respect for the Western intellectual tradition or is the emphasis on deconstruction and interpretation? Once you pick the right place to study, there is a method that you can use to help you through your studies: Devil's Advocate. This is the approach that I used in my undergraduate studies (I don't think that it's a good method to use in graduate school but that's another topic) and it helped me immensely. It consists of taking one mindset in class (i.e., take the material in and let it operate in your mind) and then quite a different mindset outside of class when your coursework is completed (i.e., this material is wrong because... or this material is right because...). Although it takes a lot of hard extra work, I found this approach to be immensely beneficial. In class I would put Objectivism aside and I would put on my "academic thinking" cap. Outside of class I was integrating my coursework with what I knew to be true or false. This both enhanced and strengthened my understanding of what I was learning in college as well as furthering my understanding of Objectivism. It's never too late to get a degree. Even though there is a lot of hogwash in college, having a degree greatly increases your career opportunities and that is an objectively good thing. [Edit: added following] Just a word on why I call this the "Devil's Advocate" approach: as the Devil's Advocate, you can give arguments for a view that you do not actually believe in. This is all that honest teachers actually expect from their students, i.e., the ability to summarize material.

The vast majority of the country would not draw that conclusion. They would scream for more government control over the economy if anything. The only way to prove to people what is wrong with the Reserve and with fiat money is to demonstrate the pillars of capitalism and the philosophy that it depends upon.

O, it wouldn't really be a problem if it weren't for the complete corruption of words like "information" and "computation" in the cognitive sciences. I have been arguing against the information processing view of consciousness which is by far the predominant view in fields like artificial intelligence and cognitive science and it is even permeating fields like psychology and biology. It is for this reason that one shouldn't use these words in this context or at least to qualify their meaning. I don't jump on my friends when they say that my computer crashed because it has some "bad information" on it. If my friend were, say, Daniel Dennett (yeah right....) then I would jump on him.

Strictly speaking, No, No, No, No, Information is not spatial so it can "go" nowhere, and finally, no we cannot still call it information. Self-awareness has never been a part of my argument...it's quite obvious that a non-conscious entity could not be self aware. What is apparently hard to grasp is that non-conscious entities do not contain, manipulate, create, understand, or destroy information. There are hard drives with magnetic charges, pieces of paper with ink on them, etc. but without a conceptual consciousness there to make use of these things, there is no information there to speak of.

It isn't invalid to say that a clock keeps track of time but to hold that time is "out there in the clock" is invalid. To say that sense organs process information is OK as long as you don't hold that the information is intrinsic to the process of transduction itself. The information processing view of consciousness holds that information is intrinsic to the brain, that information is "out there in the physical world." There are plenty of valid terms left to describe what computers do: execute programs, store data, transfer data, etc. I wouldn't even have a problem saying that computers process information as long as you don't mean that there are little 1's and 0's in a computer's memory and that the computer manipulates that information (i.e., symbols). But the information processing view holds exactly that; it claims that information and symbols exist apart from consciousness. Look, the metaphysics of consciousness is a very tricky subject. If there is any part of philosophy that must demand precise meanings in the terms that it uses, then it is here. Call me a stickler but I'm sticking to precise meanings of words.

Those are not philosophical questions but they are a fascinating topic of study.

"Computation" presupposes information so I wouldn't describe the brain (or computers for that matter) as doing computation. Brains don't count and they don't do algebra. A computer used to be a human being who performed these tasks and it was an innocent metaphorical application at first to apply the word "computer" to a big box of vacuum tubes. That metaphor has now become a literal belief for almost everyone doing work in the cognitive sciences these days (thanks to Stephen I have even learned that "hard" sciences like neurobiology use the term literally). I'm not saying that we should completely shun the word all together. What I am saying is that in philosophy we need to insist on strict definitions. "Information" is a loaded term in this respect and it is the source of an immense number of errors in the cognitive sciences. I have a lot to say about "models" and their practicality but I want to leave the discussion to this point which a lot of people get wrong.

That is exactly what I am saying.

They go hand-in-hand on the time scale that is in discussion here. From the Appendix of IToE:

Consciousness is defined ostensively. One does not defend the existence of consciousness by pointing to other conscious beings and flatly asserting that there is something more going on than just what the thing does. Yes, most academics deny the existence of consciousness in one way or another but Nagel's question is not a defense of consciousness. If this is what Nagel attempted to do in posing that question (and I think it is), then it is absurd. Consciousness is not an explanatory postulate. It is a self-evident fact. Nagel's question--whether well intentioned or not--attempts to bypass one of the most fundamental axioms of all knowledge. I don't see how anyone can give it one shred of legitimacy.

As with most questions that come from modern philosophy, Nagel's question (the one that started this thread) is arbitrary (earlier I pointed out why this question is arbitrary). The proper response to the arbitrary is to just dismiss it outright: Once you accept that "What is it like to be a bat?" is an actual thought with cognitive content, then you have sacrificed all objectivity. This thread should be a lot shorter than it is.

It is a must read for those interested in modern philosophy since it is one of the most influential books of the last century. That said, it is a really terrible book if you at all care about truth and objectivity. Wittgenstein did a lot to invalidate concepts and he led the way for so many bad things in psychology and philosophy such as linguistic analysis and logical positivism.

Miles created quite the supergroup for Bitches Brew. Although it may not be the best choice if you aren't a musician or if you don't care for 20-minute improvisations. If you want some good early fusion music, try Miles' On the Corner as it's much more accessible.

Pardon my French, but "true scholarship" my ass!

You've done anything but that. Let there be no doubt...

Rather than let the idea peter out, I thought that I might take the liberty to begin a thread on the first part of the book, Ayn Rand's Introduction. I just have two points that I want to make. There are two things that should be kept in mind while reading this book. This is, of course, in addition to the book's factual and philosophical substance. Psycho-epistemology Dr. Peikoff illustrates connections between the broadest abstractions and historical concretes. Reading The Ominous Parallels (henceforth OP) can be considered a psycho-epistemological exercise. In reading OP, you are moving your mind through the steps that a great philosopher has/would make. Miss Rand writes: Relevance to current events This book couldn't be more relevant than it is today. Again, Miss Rand: There is a third tribe: Islamists. And the United States continues to bathe in self-abrogation. Thoughts? [Edit Note: it's bathe not bath...I hate spelling errors. ]

Ideas are a life or death matter; they are in every way a matter of good and evil. Ayn Rand looked at Kant and saw the Holocaust. Hitler's power was only made possible because millions of people sanctioned his ideas by reserving such harsh judgments as naming his ideas for what they were: pure evil. Once you grasp that ideas have a source, once you grasp that ideas have consequences, only then will you earn the right to use a word like "evil."

And don't just limit your search to Objectivist women. I think a person's sense of life is their most important characteristic (it tells you more about them than their consciously professed philosophy): There are Objectivist women with perhaps something to be desired in this area and by the same token there are non-Objectivist women who have an impeccable sense of life. I would prefer the woman with a better sense of life regardless of whether she held the same ideas as me or not. Indeed, my wife is not an Objectivist but she has a wonderful sense of life . We are now reading Atlas Shrugged together (out loud) and she and I both are loving every minute. We're newlyweds but I know I was right to marry her based on her sense of life.

You are wrong. I already pointed out that people can be honestly mistaken and they are not the ones who are destroying the concept "liberty." Authorities are great. They save me from having to write 5 page papers to answer questions such as the one you posed. You will never catch me saying "it's true because so-and-so said it." It is a common and acceptable practice in philosophy and the sciences to make references to the work of others. One can do this and still be a completely independent thinker. In fact, my suggestion to you has been to read on your own and come to your own decision.

Fascinating, Stephen! Thanks for the leads!

I have no problems using the word "evil" and I have no problems applying to people who I see as destructive to something I hold dear, i.e., freedom. Again, I refer you to those two articles for a fuller understanding. I assure you that I am not just throwing out an emotional term by whim. Since you know that you enjoy the writings of Ayn Rand, I suggest that you put issues like this aside for now and focus on what you are really interested in, namely her ideas. Forget the bickering and the "cult" notion and read her books. If--after you have studied her for some time--there is still any interest in these topics, you will have ample information with which to form the proper conclusion. As far as your experiences with this forum, I think the discussions are quite mature. The typical discussion board is full of swear words, smears, flames, immature name-calling, and all kinds of trash. The moderators have done a good job of securing this site from that kind of garbage.

Vicki, No wonder you are disturbed at my use of the word "evil"! I have never felt compelled to label 99.9% of the world's population as "evil." There is plenty of room in Objectivism for honest errors. I also understand that some people who claim to be Libertarians are honestly mistaken. I would not call them "evil" but I also do not consider them to be Libertarians. As to why I would choose to use such a strong word, I recommend reading Fact and Value and On Moral Sanctions.

Yes, that is what I am saying. Further, I don't believe that you can even say that computers process information. "Information" is a concept of consciousness and to apply it to physical things is a form of reification. I don't say much at all about "information processing" since it is not a term that I favor using because of the way it is used/abused in fields like cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Its roots are in representationalism which is a terrible modern version of Kant. I call that "perception."

Succinctly, it is about the influence of philosophy on man. Ideas guide men and their actions and, consequently, ideas write history. More specifically it is about the Nazi rise to power; it is about their philosophy and how it led to their actions. Dr. Peikoff makes the transition between historical concretes and broad abstractions seamless and clear. It is a brilliant achievement and I wish there were hundreds more books like it.